Better luck next year: When will the Red Wings run out of patience with the Yzer-plan?

The pressure should be on. It is time.

Welcome back to Better Luck Next Year, a series that will focus on each team as they get eliminated from Stanley Cup Playoff contention and the Stanley Cup Playoffs. What went wrong, why it went wrong, what (if anything) went right, and what is next. We continue today with the next team to be eliminated from Stanley Cup Playoff contention: The Detroit Red Wings.

There is one thing I have noticed with a significant portion of Detroit Red Wings fans over the past couple of seasons — they are, for the most part, incredibly patient when it comes to the rebuilding process that has been put together by general manager Steve Yzerman.

The team has not made the playoffs in nine years, with six of those coming under Yzerman’s watch.

Despite the lack of success, and despite the lack of significant progress in the rebuild, Red Wings fans do not seem to be in much of a hurry to be overly critical of Yzerman’s process.

If you question the process, you get immediate pushback.

He also seems to be on steady ground when it comes to ownership.

I think it comes down to one of two things.

The first is that Red Wings fans — and the Red Wings themselves — are incredibly loyal to Yzerman given what he did for the organization as a player. He is a giant in the franchise and helped bring multiple Stanley Cups to the city. That sort of impact and history gives people an extensive leash with fans. You want to be loyal. You want to support them. You do not want to criticize them. It is part of being a fan. I get that.

The second is that Red Wings fans understood the undertaking this job was going to be when Yzerman took over given the mess that was left behind by Ken Holland. The franchise had a depleted farm system, a horrible salary cap situation and few — if any — long-term pieces on the roster. It was going to take a lot of tearing down and rebuilding, and those things take time. Sometimes a lot of time.

But how much patience can you have when the process remains this … slow.

And should it be this slow?

Is inheriting a mess a free pass to take as much time as you need to turn the team into something competitive? Is it a lifetime contract? When does the pressure turn up?

Especially when the process seems to be largely dependent on “we just have to keep waiting to see how the prospects develop.”

That can take a while, and it is far from a sure thing.

I wrote about this with the Red Wings back in December, but you can not just simply rely on hitting home runs with draft picks and prospects. Some (most?) of them are going to fail. Some will be good, but not as good as you think. Some will get hurt. A few might pan out as expected. That is just the nature of prospects and prospect development. Even so, you still have to supplement them with trades and free agent additions. While drafting and player development is a significant part of a rebuild, it can not be the only aspect. And the Red Wings under Yzerman’s watch have consistently failed with their NHL-level scouting, and the roster today has several *new* bad contracts that are Yzerman’s own doing.

There have been some big developments with players internally. Lucas Raymond is a stud. Moritz Seider is an outstanding all-around defenseman. Simon Edvinsson is on the right track to being a cornerstone of that blue line. Marco Kasper showed a lot this season as it went on.

Those are all great signs and great developments.

But is it enough?

The overall results on a team level are an emphatic no.

I took a similar look at this back in December shortly after the Red Wings made a coaching-change, but here are the Red Wings 5-on-5 numbers (and finishes in the league-wide standings) throughout Yzerman’s tenure and the year before he took over (just as a starting point and baseline comparison).

Until this season there was a yearly improvement in the standings, going from the bottom of the league and eventually reaching the almost exact middle of the league for one year in 2023-24.

But it is a lot easier to go from awful to mediocre than it is to go from mediocre to good. The Red Wings found that out this season when they took a step backwards.

Along with the consistently mediocre to bad results, look at the process behind those results. Outside of one shooting-percentage driven season in 2023-24, the offense has been awful. They are consistently awful when it comes to generating chances (xGF/60) and consistently bad at preventing them. They get badly out-chanced and just do not typically generate anything positive during 5-on-5 play. They are bad. Really bad.

They are now six years in to Yzerman’s tenure and they are not meaningfully better on the ice than they were the year before Yzerman took over.

There is certainly more young talent. There is definitely a core in place. There is a path to success. But it is not actually producing meaningful results.

This has been with, now, three different head coaches over this stretch (we will get into this a bit later).

What has been interesting so far this offseason is, for the first time, I actually heard some frustration from at least one member of the Red Wings roster, and arguably the most important member of the roster — captain Dylan Larkin.

"We didn’t do anything,” said Larkin at his end of season media availability regarding the team’s inactivity at the trade deadline. “And I felt we as a group — We didn’t gain any momentum from the trade deadline and guys were kind of down about it. It would be nice to add something and bring a little bit of a spark on the ice and maybe a morale boost as well."

It’s not exactly a scathing criticism directed at Yzerman or the overall plan, but it’s clear there was at least a little bit of frustration that more was not done to help the team. It’s also not surprising that Larkin would be the one to speak up since he is 1) the captain and 2) the longest tenured member of the team and has only been a part of one playoff appearance in his career (his rookie season). If anybody is over this, it is almost certainly going to be him.

Yzerman eventually responded by defiantly stickingto his plan and preaching more patience, pointing out there were no deals to be had and that teams like Montreal and St. Louis were able to finish strong down the stretch and still get into the playoffs.

Certainly fair points.

It WAS more of a seller’s market than a buyer’s market, which was always going to make it difficult for a fringe playoff team to be fully comfortable adding.

Other teams DID play better than Detroit down the stretch without making major additions.

But it’s also fair to point out that Montreal was in the Stanley Cup Final in 2021, rebuilt its team, and is back in the playoffs all within a five-year stretch. As long as we’re making comparisons to other teams, and that specific team in particular, it is fair to point that out.

Ownership is being patient to let the prospects keep trying to pan out.

Fans are being patient with their franchise icon in the hopes he can bring the franchise back to relevance as an executive the same way he did as a player.

But everybody has a breaking point. And I don’t care what your farm system rankings are or what your prospect pool looks like, there is going to come a point where the patience is going to run out if these results continue.

If you went back to the spring of 2019 and told Red Wings ownership and Red Wings fans, “In six years you’re still going to have no playoff appearances and you’ll have gone from 28th in the league standings to 21st” I can’t imagine many people would have signed up for that, even given the state of the team at that point.

They shouldn’t have signed up for that.

What went right this season

One of the positive things that Yzerman did do is he may have found an upgrade with the head coach.

Let’s talk about that….